I've been up and down the side bar most of the day and conducted several searches gathering opinions.

I'm torn between the Sparkfun Inventors Kit for $99 at my local Microcenter and the list by /u/kraegar (sans optional items) that has my total at around $120 shipped from Amazon and Adafruit.

I was also able to find the Sparkfun Guide that I could still use if go with the custom list.

So, my main issue is do I go with the kit and it's assurance that the guide and parts will line up perfectly, or go with the custom list and get a large quantity of parts while still using the Spark guide as a starting point for learning.

I am studying for my FE and wouldn't be able to get started until Sunday/Monday so I don't mind waiting for shipping. Although, anything past next Wednesday would have me feeling kind of antsy.

the primary advantage of the kit isn't that the "parts line up"1 but that you get a book on how use all the parts with it. You could just get a standalone arduino book, down download SFE's PDF, and then buy parts as needed for the exercises you want to do.

note1 that's actually kind of a silly phrase, the only "line up" you need is that it's 5V tolerant, and even that can be worked around with a couple resistors in most cases.